Wine tasting to finish the tour
Oak barrels in one of the bodegas
Aiden, Yazmin, and I decided to take a day trip to Jerez on Sunday. Aiden and I have been learning lots in our wine class, and Jerez is such a distinct type of wine and region of production. They produce "Jerez" wine, or "sherry" in English. I had never tried that type of wine before, and it is usually just for cooking in the US. We took a bus, which only took about an hour before arriving in the city. We stopped for breakfast, where I had toast with ham and tomato, and a cafe con leche. We then headed to Tio Pepe, a very famous winery in Jerez.
I learned so much on our tour, which was led in all Spanish. It was so fun to connect the topics from wine class to what the guide was saying and Aiden and I geeked out quite a bit. The most interesting part to me was the smell. All the wine is aged in oak barrels, which produce a much different smell than I was expecting. After smelling the barrels - an aroma that fills all of the bodegas - I can now determine that particular smell in the wines! We got to do a little wine tasting at the end of the tour which was lots of fun. I could appreciate the unique taste of the Fino wine, but I did not finish the glass and I would not choose to order it.
After our tour we explored the cathedral a little bit before heading to lunch. I got salmorejo - the cold soup that I love - and a dish that I have never tried before: a fried egg over shrimp and spinach. I love the cooked spinach here and I enjoyed it in this dish too, but the shrimp were strange. I was expecting normal sized shrimp, but this dish instead had TONS of tiny shrimp that were fully intact. I was not a big fan of this kind of shrimp because they didn't really taste like anything and the texture was really rough. I later learned that "camarones" is the word for these tiny shrimp in Spain, while "camarones" is the general term for shrimp in Latin America, which is the Spanish I am more familiar with. I learned my lesson, and I will only order shrimp that are called "gambas" while I am in Spain!!!
Aiden, Yazmin and I
Cathedral right next to the winery
The "camarones"